MidTown Ministry Update

This past Sunday we shared in both worship services the story of the development of the MidTown Ministry. If you were not able to be present, please take time to view the sermon at this link: MidTown Presentation This presentation will provide an excellent overview of how the ministry was initiated and the progress over the last couple of months.

In addition, we will begin spending time in the Connect Groups sharing more details and answering questions. We look forward to hearing from you.

Schedule Offerings for September

I announced this past weekend, and we placed in the bulletin, four new offerings for Wednesday evenings starting September 8th at 6:00 pm.  We will continue to emphasize our Connect Groups (and hopefully launch new ones) but we wanted to provide additional studies that might interest our members and attenders.  The four include:

1. Leadership from the Inside Out: A Leadership Class that I’ll teach based on my latest writing project. 2. Experiencing God 3. Men’s Fraternity 4. A Parenting Class entitled: Shepherding a Child’s Heart

There will be more information to follow on the leaders for the other classes and you’ll find this updated on our website as we solidify the offerings. (Click here to follow link to the correct page.)

Also, the staff has been in discussion for some time about emphasizing the choir ministry by moving the rehearsal time from 7:30 pm to 6:00 pm.  This accomplishes a number of things: 1. It gives the choir more time for rehearsal (from 6:00 to 7:20) and 2.  keeps families with children from being here till almost 8:45 pm.  3. and we hope it will foster interest in the choir since it will be conducted during the normal times of our ministries.  We pray the choir will continue to grow and the ministry will bear great fruit on Sunday morning as a result of the new time.  The new schedule for the choir will include the Praise Band, who will now rehearse in the auditorium beginning at 6:0o also.

Our young adult worship experience, DownPour, will move to a later time, 8:00 pm.  After considering the new schedule and comparing our Collegiate and Young Adult ministry to other churches in town, we believe this will work quite well, even allowing our collegiate and young adult members to be involved in serving our other ministries or be involved in choir.

Children’s Promise – August 2

The summer is almost over and school has either started or will start for most of the systems this week.  For us a Church, we are beginning to see the upswing of attendance as people get settled back in and routines return to normal.  That also means it’s time to bring to the forefront the Children’s Promise Campaign.  We kicked it off in late May, knowing that through the summer we would just let it build and grow without emphasizing it – but now it’s time to remind our members to give so that as soon as possible we can design and build the addition to the children’s wing.  We currently have about $38,000, which is a great start, but our goal is $400,000.  Consider what you might give to help us reach that benchmark and get the building underway.  I’ll keep you posted as we re-emphasize this project. 

Mark W. Gregory, Pastor

Sermon Series Conclusion and Smart Phone App for Sermon Notes

I’ll conclude the sermon series this week from Galatians 5 – with an emphasis on the last item on the list: self-control.  I imagine that we all need to work on this area, and fortunately, we have the resources and power of the Spirit to help us in the process of conquering those parts of our lives that come up short. 

A unique feature that we’re starting this Sunday is to make the sermon notes and scriptures available for those who have smartphones – such as the blackberry, iphone, android, palm pre, or other versions of web capable devices.  We know that many people today use their smart phones as a way of reading along with the scripture exposition.  So, you can now use the YouVersion bible app from your market and through the “live” feature on the app, you can select Calvary Baptist in this zip code and the sermon notes and scriptures will be downloaded on your phone.  It’s a great tool that we’re going to try for a few months to see if there’s sufficient interest. Let us know what you think.

If your phone market doesn’t seem to have this app, you can go to youversion.com/download and it will point you to the correct location.  It’s also known as the LifeChurch Bible.

Vacation Bible School for CBC

What a great week it’s been at Calvary with Vacation Bible School.  All the effort and work brought great results – from the worship rallies, staging, teaching, crafts, food, recreation and all … There were no less than 170 children here each of the four nights, and on Tuesday there were a number of decisions to accept Christ.  Thanks to everyone’s hard work and willingness to serve – there was probably in excess of 100 adults and other workers this year.  We’ll report more later, but just wanted to say thanks. 

And remember, this Sunday we will complete the VBS emphasis with church wide rallies in both services followed by a meal and fellowship time.

Update on Children’s Promise 6-8-2010

Just wanted to give you the latest totals on the Children’s Promise Campaign, which puts us at $34,000.  It’s a good start as we move into the summer.  Continue to pray about what you and your family can do to help us reach our goal of $400,000.  Remember, our commitment is to “build it when we get it” so we’ll look forward to the Lord prompting and moving us forward.

Children’s Promise

This Sunday we will conduct a special offering for the Children’s Promise Project. Information is available on the website that details the scope of the work; but let me address a couple of aspects here:

First, this Sunday will be the “kick off” of the campaign; in essence the cash offering will jumpstart the process. If we receive $5,000 or $10,000 – that’s great. If we receive $40,000 or more – that’s great. We’ve not established a target goal for the first Sunday; but we do believe that it’s time to get the ball rolling and let the steam build. Since this is the starting point, we intend for the contributions to keep coming in over a period of time. How long? It would be great if in just a few months everything would be in place, but our commitment is to “build it when we get it” so if it takes three months, six months or one year, that’s okay. Please keep in mind that we’re asking members to give to Children’s Promise above and beyond normal tithe giving so that the budget doesn’t suffer.

Second, for many of our new members, there may be a question about the difference between Land of Promise and Children’s Promise. These are two very different campaigns. The Land of Promise was and still is the initial campaign to pay for our land purchase and building. We started raising money toward the end of the first year of Calvary, calling it the Nehemiah Fund. That fund folded into the major campaign (Land of Promise) that continues to help pay the monthly loan amount. We encourage our new members to join us in giving to the Land of Promise (above and beyond their budget giving).

Children’s Promise is focused on the new project for the children’s wing expansion that includes new classrooms, worship space, extra parking, etc… This is a short term (hopefully) campaign that allows us to pay for the expansion without incurring additional debt. The estimate for the project is $400,000 and once that has been completed we’ll then turn our attention to the youth room project – which will be a totally separate campaign. So, in short, the Children’s Promise, as identified on the drawings, is the way we hope to expand the facility and provide for our children’s ministry.